ALiCE is a psychological horror written by Avalon Roselin that centers around Christopher Robinson, a friendly orderly at Woodrow Children's Asylum, and his journey through a disturbed town to find one of his young charges. He encounters several strange people and things along the way and experiences a fair amount of Sanity Slippage. It can be purchased at Lulu.com.

All There in the Manual: A few things about the series, such as how Michael got to be how he is, what actually happened to Christopher and some of the other characters, etc. are discussed elsewhere, including this page.

Bedlam House: Woodrow Asylum to some extent, and the third floor of the hospital.

Being Tortured Makes You Evil: The abuse and experimentation that Michael was put through made him go insane and start doing terrible things For the Evulz, though he tries to justify it as his victims deserving it. There's also some hints that despite the Laser-Guided Amnesia he inflicts on everyone, the other characters are gradually remembering some of what happens and are becoming more vicious because of it.

Dead All Along: Played with. While several of the characters are actual murder victims of Michael, all of the characters are actually figments of his imagination. Some of them have even realized this and Go Mad from the Revelation.

Driven to Villainy: Morgan is forced to drug Matthew to keep him from killing himself and tries to rape Christopher, though it's implied that he didn't have control over his own actions and was trying to get Christopher to run away beforehand.

This could apply to Prima and Terceira because despite the fact that they were both serial killers, Christopher wasn't their typical target and they were trying to kill him to stop the cycle from repeating, even though it would have been ineffective anyway.

Eldritch Abomination: Several, though Christopher is rarely physically attacked by him. They do far more damage to his sanity than his physical health, sans the Jabberwock.

Evil Orphan: Subverted, Michael was much happier when he lived at Woodrow Asylum; being adopted by Joseph and Mary and the abuse he suffered at their hands was his Start of Darkness.

Fate Worse Than Death: Since they're all figments of Michael's imagination with just enough autonomy to feel pain and fear, all of the characters are doomed to repeat the horrors they've suffered from again and again until Michael dies (and it's implied he's already dead) or becomes sane, at which point they'll stop existing altogether. Michael himself is trapped in his own deranged mind with no way to cure himself, and as a coping mechanism set up a 'game' in which everyone kills themselves or each other and the only person who ever loved him either can't be allowed to recognize him or will go insane immediately.

It's even worse for Christopher, who is specifically targeted as the 'hero', since he will always fail to rescue Mickey because it is not possible to restore Michael's sanity. He also has to live with the fact that Michael has become what he is. Even though Christopher is as imaginary as the rest of them, he is heartbroken when he finds out what Michael has done, and is repeatedly subjected to this kind of torment, which is specifically designed to drive him insane and hurt him in any way possible.

Many Spirits Inside of One: The only 'real' person is Michael, who may or may not still be alive, with Mickey representing a small part of himself that is still sane/pure, but the other characters are implied to be mostly autonomous and in some cases even actively working against Michael.

Nothing Is Scarier: The book becomes scarier if the reader takes into consideration some of the things that aren't shown, like exactly what the doctors did to Michael, particularly since some of these things are not part of Michael's dream world and actually happened in 'real life' at some point in the story, including the twins' mismatched eyes.

Unreliable Narrator: As Christopher begins to lose his mind, it becomes less clear if certain events are actually happening or if he's just hallucinating them. There's also The Reveal, which shows that Christopher was just made up of what Michael remembers about his caretaker and everything that's happened is a dream that's on a "Groundhog Day" Loop.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy